What is the FIRST step the company should take to meet these objectives?
Enable Amazon Macie on the business-critical S3 buckets to classify the sensitivity of the objects.
Enable S3 analytics to identify S3 buckets that are candidates for transitioning to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA).
Enable versioning on all business-critical S3 buckets.
Migrate the objects in all S3 buckets to S3 Intelligent-Tiering.
Explanations:
Enabling Amazon Macie helps classify and protect sensitive data but does not directly reduce storage costs. It focuses on data security rather than cost optimization.
Enabling S3 analytics provides insights into storage usage patterns, helping to identify buckets that could be transitioned to lower-cost storage classes, such as S3 Standard-IA, thereby effectively reducing costs while maintaining durability and performance.
Enabling versioning allows for multiple versions of objects to be stored, which increases storage costs rather than reducing them. It does not directly address the objective of lowering costs.
While migrating to S3 Intelligent-Tiering can optimize costs based on access patterns, it may not be the first step. The company should first analyze data access patterns through S3 analytics to make informed decisions about which storage classes to use.
As I see it, the answer is:
Enable S3 analytics to identify S3 buckets that are candidates for transitioning to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA).